Logos Christology’s Effect on the Sunni View of the Quran

In this post, I will be quoting from Harry Austryn Wolfson’s monumental work titled Philosophy of Kalam, published by Harvard University Press in 1976, pp. 235-244.

The work can be accessed here: Harry Austryn Wolfson The Philosophy Of The Kalam.

Wolfson shows how the Christian doctrine of Christ as the Logos (Word) of God helped to shape and influence the early Muslim debates on the nature of the Quran. All emphasis will be mine.

Chapter III

I. The Uncreated Koran

I. ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNCREATED KORAN

In the preceding chapter, on the basis of statements expressing opposition to a prevailing manner of predicating certain terms of God, we have shown that early in the eighth century, and presumably before that, there existed in Islam a belief that two terms by which God is described in the Koran, namely, the terms “living” and “knowing” or the terms “living” and “powerful” or the terms “knowing” and “powerful,” indicated that in God there existed either life and knowledge or life and power or knowledge and power as real eternal things distinct from His essence. We have also shown how these real eternal things were designated by the Arabic terms ma‘ani, “things,” and sifat, “characteristics,” the latter of which came to be translated, through a thirteenth-century Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic work by Maimonides, by the term “attributes.” We have also shown how this belief arose out of disputations between Muslims and Christians over the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and how the connecting link between the Muslim doctrine of attributes and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is to be found in two facts: (1) in the fact that the two Arabic terms ma‘ani and sifat are direct translations respectively of the Greek pragmata, which is used as a designation of the persons of the Trinity, and the Greek charakteristika, which is used as a designation of the distinctive properties of the persons; (2) in the fact that the two alternative sets of terms which occur in the earliest discussions of the problem of attributes, namely, life and knowledge or life and power or knowledge and power, correspond exactly to two alternative sets of terms by which the second and the third persons of the Trinity, namely, the Son and the Holy Spirit, were described in the earliest representations of the Trinity in Arabic. The term “knowledge,” it may be remarked, is used synonymously with the term “wisdom.”

But the second person of the Trinity is also described by two other terms, and these two terms are also predicated of God in the Koran. Thus the second person of the Trinity is called Word (logos) in the New Testament,¹ and the term “Word” (kalimah), which occurs in several verses in the Koran in connection with the birth of Jesus,’ reflects that New Testament term. Among the Church Fathers, the second person is also called “will,” for, as says Athanasius, “we have heard from the prophet that He is become the ‘Angel of Great Counsel’² and is called the Will (thelema) of the Father.”³ Now, in the Koran, the terms “word” and “will” as predicates of God are also implied in the expressions “God spoke” (kallama)⁴ and “God willed” (arada).⁵ Accordingly, if we were right in assuming that the three terms, “life,” “knowledge-wisdom,” and “power,” upon which was centered the early controversy over attributes, were derived from the terms by which the second and third persons of the Trinity were described, we should expect that the terms “word” and “will” should also become a subject of controversy in the early history of the problem of attributes. That this is what happened may be gathered from reports about the terms used by Najjar (between 750 and 840) to illustrate how they are to be interpreted as negations by those who deny that they are real attributes.⁶ Thus in one report his followers are said to have agreed with those who denied of God “knowledge, power, life, and His other eternal attributes.”⁷ The three terms mentioned in this report are the original three terms which in various twofold combinations formed, as we have seen, the subject of controversy in the earliest stage of the problem. But in another report he is said to have believed that “God is continuously speaking in the sense that He is never incapable of issuing a word (al-kalam).”⁸ In still another report he is said to have believed that “God is continuously willing (murid) that what He knows would come to pass should come to pass and what He knows would not come to pass should not come to pass, and this willingness is in virtue of himself; it is not in virtue of a will; but it 1s in the sense that He is not reluctant or forced.”⁹ The fact, therefore, that, in addition to his denial that “knowledge” and “power” and “life” are real eternal attributes, Najjar went on to deny that also “word” and “will” are not real eternal attributes shows that also “word” and — “will” had already come to be regarded as real eternal attributes, and quite evidently they had come to be so regarded as a result of the debates between Christians and Muslims on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Such debates, as may be inferred from the Disputatio Christiani et Saraceni by John of Damascus, began to appear in Syria after its conquest by the Muslims in 635, when the Muslims came in contact with learned spokesmen of Christianity. There is thus reason to assume that the belief in real eternal attributes, including the real eternal attribute “word,” did not arise in Islam before that date, and presumably it was not long after that date that it did arise.

From all this it may be gathered that with the rise of the problem of attributes during the first half of the eighth century, those who are reported as the opponents of the orthodox belief in the reality of eternal attributes illustrated their denial of attributes by mentioning such attributes as knowledge-wisdom, life, power, will, and word-speech, all of which are derived from terms predicated of God in the Koran and all of which are also used in Christianity as descriptions of two of the three persons of the Trinity, some of them of the second person and some of the third person.

Independently of this belief in the reality of eternal attributes, and undoubtedly prior to it, there had already been current in Islam a belief in the existence of a Koran before its revelation and even before the creation of the world. However, unlike the belief in the reality of eternal attributes, which, as we have seen, arose under Christian influence, the belief in the pre-existence of the Koran had its basis in three statements in the Koran itself. First, the Koran describes itself as “an honorable Koran, in a Hidden (maknun) Book” (56:76, 77). Second, it describes itself as “a glorious Koran, on a Preserved (mahfuz) Tablet” (85:22). Third, it describes itself as “an Arabic Koran . . . in the Mother (777) of the Book” (43:3).¹⁰ All this quite naturally was taken to mean that the Koran, prior to its revelation, had existed in a sort of heavenly Koran invariably described as “a Hidden Book” or “a Preserved Tablet” or “the Mother of the Book.” This conception of a pre-existent Koran is nothing but a reflection of the traditional Jewish belief in a pre-existent Torah,¹¹ for the Koran constantly describes its revelatory nature as being the same as that of the Torah.¹² A connecting link between the pre-existence of the Koran and the pre-existence of the Torah may be discerned in the use of the expressions “Hidden Book” and “Preserved Tablet” as descriptions of the pre-existent Koran and the use of the expressions “Preserved (genuzah) Treasure”¹³ and “Hidden (musna‘) with God”¹⁴ as descriptions of the pre-existent Torah. Now in Judaism, the Torah, though pre-existent, was still created; it was created prior to the creation of the world.¹⁵ We may, therefore, assume that the original teaching of the Koran about its own pre-existence, and also the original Muslim belief based upon that teaching, was that the pre-existent Koran was created prior to the creation of the world. There is nothing directly contradictory to such a view. The earliest reference to a belief in the uncreatedness of the Koran is contained in a tradition which ascribes it to Ibn Abbas who died in 687,¹⁶ over fifty years after the conquest of Syria in 635, by which time the belief in the reality of eternal attributes, including the eternal real attribute of “Word” in the sense of an eternal pre-existent Koran, may have already been firmly established. Nor, as I shall try to show,¹⁷ is there any evidence that the teaching of the createdness of the Koran by a son-in-law of a contemporary of Muhammad, which Ibn Athir later branded as heretical, was really regarded as heretical at the time of the teaching. A survival of this original belief in a created preexistent Koran is to be discerned in a tradition handed down in the name of the Prophet that the Preserved Tablet was created by God prior to His creation of the world.¹⁸ Incidentally, this tradition is said to be shared “by the people of the Book, whether Jews, Christians, or Samaritans.”¹⁹

It happens, however, that, following the Hebrew Scripture which refers to every one of its revelations as “the word of God,”²⁰ the Koran also refers to the revelations contained therein either in the singular as “the word (kalam) of God,”²¹ or in the plural, as “the words (kalimat) of God,”²² and, by implication, it uses also the same expression as a description of the Law²³ and the Psalms²⁴ and the Gospels.²⁵ So also, following his own reference to the Law of Moses as “the Book and Wisdom,”²⁶ which is evidently based upon the verse in the Book of Proverbs where the Law of Moses is referred to as “wisdom,”²⁷ Muhammad refers to the Koran as “the Book and Wisdom.”²⁸ Moreover, in several places, directly or by implication, the Koran is described as being “knowledge” from God.²⁹ The Koran thus describes itself by the terms “word” and “wisdom” and “knowledge.” With the rise, therefore, under the influence of the Christian Trinity, of the belief in eternal real attributes, the terms “word” and “wisdom” and “knowledge,” which are predicated of God and are used to mean the Koran, came to mean eternal, uncreated attributes in God and hence also an eternal, uncreated pre-existent Koran. Thus the original belief in a preexistent Koran which was created became a belief in an uncreated pre-existent Koran. Accordingly, just as the Antiattributists argued that the belief in attributes does not differ from the Christian belief in the Trinity,³⁰ so also Caliph Mamun (786-833), during his campaign against the belief in the uncreatedness of the Koran, in his third letter to the governor of Baghdad, argues that those who believe in the uncreatedness of the Koran are “like Christians when they claim that Jesus the son of Mary was not created (mahluk) because he was the Word of God.”³¹ 

The upshot of our discussion is that the belief in a preexistent uncreated Koran was a revision of an original belief in a pre-existent created Koran and that, while the original belief in a pre-existent created Koran was based directly upon the teaching of the Koran itself, the revised belief in a preexistent uncreated Koran was an offshoot of the belief in eternal uncreated attributes, which belief, as we have seen, arose under the influence of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. When exactly the belief in eternal, uncreated attributes and its corollary, the belief in an uncreated Koran, arose we do not know. I have already mentioned the tradition which refers to one who died in 687 as a believer in the uncreatedness of the Koran and I have also mentioned Ibn Athir’s unsupported view that the createdness of the Koran taught by a son-in-law of a contemporary of Muhammad was heretical at the time it was taught.³² Historically, opposition to the belief in an uncreated Koran does not appear until the early part of the eighth century, with Ja‘d b. Dirham (d. 743) and Jahm b. Safwan (d. 746).³³ Reference to the existence of a sectarian controversy in Islam over the problem of the uncreatedness of the Koran during the early part of the eighth century is also to be found in a fictional disputation between a Muslim and a Christian, in which its author, John of Damascus (d. ca. 754), instructs Christians how to carry on a religious debate with Muslims.³⁴

In that fictional disputation, John of Damascus advises the Christian to wrest from the Muslim the admission that Jesus is called in the Koran (4:169) the Word (kalimah) of God in the sense of a pre-existent Christ, just as the Koran is called in it the Word of God in the sense of a pre-existent Koran, and hence to try to force him to admit that the Word of God in the sense of a pre-existent Christ is uncreated, remarking that the Muslim interlocutor, as a good orthodox Muslim, is bound to reject the view that the Word of God in whatever sense used is created, “for,” says John of Damascus, “those among the Saracens who maintain this are heretics and most abominable and despicable.”³⁵ What John of Damascus means to say here is that the Muslim, to be consistent, would have to admit that the Word of God used in the Koran in the sense of the pre-existent Christ was uncreated, since the Word of God used in the Koran in the sense of the pre-existent Koran is regarded by orthodox Islam as uncreated and since also the denial of the uncreatedness of the Koran is regarded by it as heresy. A similar allusion by John of Damascus to the Muslim belief in an uncreated preexistent Koran, after the analogy of the Christian belief in an uncreated pre-existent Christ, is to be found in his statement concerning the Koran that Muhammad declared that “a Scripture had been brought down to him from heaven.”³⁶ The description of the Koran as having been brought down “from heaven,” which John of Damascus attributes to Muhammad, undoubtedly means that it was eternal and uncreated, for the phrase “from heaven” is borrowed from the New Testament description of the pre-existent Christ as “he that came down from heaven,”³⁷ “he that cometh from heaven,”³⁸ and “the Lord from heaven,”³⁹ and this New Testament description of the pre-existent Christ is known to have meant to John of Damascus that the pre-existent Christ was eternal and uncreated.

Having thus made the Christian force the Muslim to admit that the Word of God used in the Koran in the sense of the pre-existent Christ is uncreated, John of Damascus then tries to make the Christian force the Muslim to admit that the uncreated pre-existent Christ is God, for “everything that is not created, but uncreated, is God.”⁴⁰ What he means to say is that everything not created but eternally generated is coeternal with God and hence God, for eternity spells God. What the Muslim’s answer would be to this reasoning of the Christian is not given here by John of Damascus, but from his statement elsewhere that the Muslims ‘call us Associaters (etairiastai - al-mushrikun), because, they say, we bring in an associate to God when we claim that Christ is the Son of God and God,”⁴¹ we may gather that the Muslim’s answer here, as in the case of attributes,⁴² would be that even if one were to admit for the sake of argument that the pre-existent Christ was eternally generated and hence eternal, he would still not be God, for eternity does not mean deity. Then, also, the Muslim might have argued that, while the Word of God as applied in the Koran to itself can be shown to mean a preexistent Koran,⁴³ the Word of God as applied in it to Christ only means the creative word “Be” by which all things in the world are created by God.⁴⁴

From all this we may gather that already in the early part of the eighth century there existed in Islam two views with regard to the question as to whether the Word of God, by which is meant the pre-existent Koran, was uncreated or created, and that the denial of its uncreatedness was referred to by John of Damascus as a heretical Muslim view. We may further gather that, from such debates between Muslims and Christians as that referred to by John of Damascus, Muslims came to know that Christians compared their belief in an uncreated Word of God in the sense of a pre-existent Christ to the Muslim belief in an uncreated Word of God in the sense of a pre-existent Koran. It is therefore quite reasonable to assume that from such debates as well as from the New Testament statement that “all things were made through Him” (John 1:3) the Muslims also learned that the pre-existent Christ was conceived of by Christians as being a creator. When we therefore find a statement, quoted by Ash‘ari in the name of men who died in 712, which reads that “the Koran is not a creator nor is it created,”⁴⁵ it is, again, quite reasonable to assume that this statement was meant to contrast the Muslim conception of the pre-existent Koran with the Christian conception of the pre-existent Christ, analogous to the Koranic contrast between the Muslim conception of God and the Christian conception of God implied in the verse “He begctteth not, and He is not begotten” (111:3).

Further Reading

Trinitarianism’s Impact on Salafism’s Humanoid Deity